I have been teaching intercultural communication courses and workshops for almost two decades and have often been disappointed by the literature in the field. This is because textbooks in intercultural communication are rarely populated by people like my students or myself. I have lived in a number of countries for extended periods, I speak a number of languages and I have close relationships with people whose backgrounds and trajectories are very different from mine. The same is true of the students in my classes and the people around me, who hail from a wide variety of national, ethnic, linguistic, educational, class and gender backgrounds with many different trajectories, experiences and stories. My disappointment with much of the intercultural communication literature stems from the fact that ‘real people’ with all their differences hardly ever seem to figure in that literature. It stems from the fact that the object of enquiry often does not seem ‘real’: intercultural communication in real life is embedded in economic, social and cultural globalisation, and transnational mobility resulting from forced or voluntary migration for work, study or tourism. The main challenges of intercultural communication are the linguistic challenges of language learning, the discursive challenges of stereotyping, and the social challenges of inclusion and justice.

The first (2011) edition of this book had therefore been motivated by my desire to introduce the study of intercultural communication in a way that was relevant to and reflective of real life. This motivation continues to be the driving force behind this revised and expanded second edition. In our fast-changing world that is ever-more characterised by global flows, systems and networks, intercultural communication is a dynamic field and a lot has changed since the first edition of this book was published. Therefore, the second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to take account of new developments in the field. In addition to updating and revising the existing text, a new chapter on intercultural communication in education (Chapter 10) has been added, which examines how cultural stereotyping is related to educational disadvantage and explores ways in which cultural and linguistic diversity in schools can be better supported.